NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – A talking Jesus doll is due to go on sale in May, along with versions of Moses, the Virgin Mary and David, as a teddy bear maker tries to find a market with churches and religious families. The foot-tall Jesus doll will be able to recite five Biblical verses at the push of button on its back, while the Moses doll will recite the Ten Commandments. The Mary doll will recite a long Bible verse. Joshua Livingston, one of the original founders of Valencia, Calif.-based Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Co. has returned to the company to head its new Biblical doll unit, One2Believe. In the past, Beverly Hills Teddy Bear mostly manufactured bears and other plush toys on a contract basis for other retailers. Full article here.
Let’s face it. It’s not every day you hear the phrase “Biblical doll unit”. – Bill
Theology and Culture: a theoblog for creativity, pop culture and God stuff 
Let us not forget the original place for such novelties:
http://www.mcphee.com
It’s all about the wind-up Nunzilla.
AND… lets not forget that Archie McPhee’s is a Seattle institution and only across the canal from where I sit right now. I think I need to get some tat after this blog…
This whole thing of the “Jesus Action Figure” continues to amaze and amuse me – but there is something very serious here. I can’t tell you how many students connected at some strange level with the “Buddy Christ” doll that George Carlin waved around in the beginning of Kevin Smith’s “Dogma” film. What is with this need for kitche tat with the face of the incarnate on it? Does the humor allow us a level of intimacy (I know I am riffing on this… but bare me out a bit longer…) in ways that doctrinal assertion or the practice of sincere worship does not? Do we feel a connection through mocking that engages us in the “desire” motive Brannon commented earlier on in relation to Zizek? In short, is it that humor and satire, as Jonathan Swift always asserted, actually the truest form of worship?
Hmmm… I need a joy buzzer…
“He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'”
Who would want to worship the terrible, incomprehensible, life-changing power of God, if they thought they could get away with worshipping a man-made concept of Him instead? Especially if it was cuddly fuzzy wuzzy, or gave you a perpetual “thumbs-up” while cruising on rollerskates!
Humour and satire may be the truest form of worship… if “humorous” and “satirical” are the truest description of that which is being worshipped.
“God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
penitentman is getting close… what we can not define (and therefore control) scares us, hence fundamentalism.
If Jesus is more than talking doll, how much more? And, when he becomes “more” and unable to be pigeon holed, how can we define ourselves in relationship to a moving target?
This is the backlash of the imago dei as relationship/community. The thing that drives us spiritually scares us the most – and I don’t mean Linda blair doing the crab walk down the stairs scared. I mean the unsettling uncertainty of the meaning and purpose of my/our existence.
Yes, the taling jesus figure is the plush and fuzzy effigy (thank the plush savior for dictionary.com) of our communal existential crisis. And, yes that comment brough tin a whole Girard “scapegoat” element to the conversation…
PS. Please do not discount this post because I did not italicize “imago dei”
Jimmy White Shoes,
Not italicizing imago dei may be heresy but it doesn’t discount your post. What does discount your post is that you didn’t once mention U2 or Bono or in any other way invoke those venerable Dubliners.
Bono is my co-pilot